Wednesday, September 24, 2008

[js]Not very foccacia-ey this one, because I made the mistake of not letting my dough rise for the second time.

I wanted to make pizza but pizza was for dinnertime and I was stuck in that limbo-time between lunch and dinner. After I made the dough for the pizza and had let it rise for an hour, I still had a couple of hours till dinner.

I wanted a snack while I waited for dinner. So, I made another batch of dough.

[js]I made my dough whole wheat: Instead of the 3 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour, I did 1-1/2 cups of whole wheat flour and 1-1/2 cups of all-purpose.

I was very surprised to find some white wine in our fridge. It has probably been there for a long time and was now turning into vinegar. Oh well, I figure the most damage it would do would be to add some sourness to the dough.

Anyway, I mixed all the dry ingredients and incorporated all of the wet until they came together. I kneaded the dough until it became smooth and sprang back when poked.

In an oiled bowl, I covered the dough and waited for it to rise. After it had risen to twice its size, I punched it down. The dough at this stage is ready to be made into pizza or foccaccia.

[js]To make my "foccacia," I added two tablespoons more of olive oil and stretched some dough into a square pan, added some rosemary, and sprinkled the dough with salt. I baked it for about 20 minutes at 450 degrees.

I should have let it rise for another 30 minutes in the pan, but I forgot.

After its time in the oven, it was perfectly "eatable". I like it, of course, with some balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.

It's a little bit softer than traditional foccaccia but it's good enough for me.